Abraham Moon: the name on everyone's lips - and labels

Lovely as it is, Guiseley doesn't immediately strike you as the sort of town where fashion moments happen very often. But this leafy suburb north-west of Leeds is certainly having one at the moment. Or a bit of one, at least. Over the past few years everyone from Ralph Lauren to Dolce & Gabbana has descended on the place, and not for Harry Ramsdens fish and chips, Guiseley's most famous export to date, either.

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No, the thing that draws them is a 174-year-old woollen mill in a sprawl of sooty Victorian stone buildings either side of the Netherfield Road. There etched on to a black vitreous panel by the entrance are the words Abm Moon & Sons Ltd, the Abm for Abraham. It's a good solid Yorkshire name for a company that has been weaving good solid Yorkshire cloth, including beautiful heathery tweeds and sturdy flannels and military gaberdines, since long before the current craze for all things heritage. There's no doubt that that craze has been pretty good for business of late, though. Extremely good. Such is demand from the world of international fashion (and interiors) that the mill will have produced in the region of 1.25 million metres of cloth this year alone, much of it for Marks & Spencer, its biggest customer in this country, which is so proud of the relationship that it has taken to putting labels marked "Authentic Yorkshire tweed by Moon" into some of its heritage-inspired men's jackets, coats, weekend bags and flat caps. "We're the busiest we've ever been," says John Walsh, Moon's managing director, whose family has owned the mill since 1920. "It's our time and we are making the most of it."

Blazer, £129, and tweed bag, £139, both by Marks & Spencer.

Of course, it hasn't always been so rosy. Up until the 1970s there was still a handful of mills in Guiselely but they went, in Walsh's words, "one by one by one", victims of the dramatic decline in British textile making. Doubtless Moon's would have gone the same way too, but for Walsh's acuity and determination. Now it stands as a monument to the changing fortunes of the British textile industry - and to changing fashions, as a trawl through the company archives attests. Big, thick albums of scalloped swatches soon dispel any notion that previous generations were soberly dressed. In fact, judging by the profusion of vibrant purples and yellows and pinks in one particular tome, the Edwardian gentleman could be devilishly bold in his choice of checks. The other thing that strikes you is just how thick the cloths were back then. These days not only are the tweeds and such like lighter but Moon's runs to some incredibly luxurious cashmeres, too.

It's the vast archive, and the quality of the cloth, that attracts chains like M&S and all those designers, who might ask Moon's to recreate designs exactly or adapt them to their own specifications. They're not averse to sending in random pieces to be copied either. As if on cue, from out of a black bin liner one of Moon's own textile designers pulls a battered old tweed jacket that looks like it might have belonged to Compo: it's come from the team at Ralph Lauren, who picked up the jacket in a charity shop, and have asked that the fabric be recreated right down to the crumpled distress.

Dyed wool is stored, ready to be blended then carded and woven.

And distress and special finishes are something that Moon's is very good at. I should know, having toured the mill, as well as the design studio, and watched with fascination every stage of production, starting with dying of the virgin wool, which is stacked in huge compressed bales in a ginormous hangar-like shed. Something like two tonnes of the stuff is dyed each day alone (it's mainly from Australia or South Africa, British wool being considered too coarse for clothing, and generally used only for carpets). Next comes blending of the colours, a slightly comical if exacting process that involves two men in a chamber raking precise quantities of different shades into a giant vacuum hose. It looks like a task off Big Brother. This is followed by carding, spinning, weaving, finishing and, in some cases, the making up of pieces. In fact, what I now can't tell you about weaving isn't worth knowing.

All in all, it's heart-warming to see a British company with such a rich history flourishing. The final leg of my tour takes in a room where cashmere scarves are being trimmed and packed ready for dispatch to M&S stores to be sold under the Collezione label. There, sitting at a table, is a young guy painstakingly combing the tassels on each and every scarf. Perhaps it's the OCD in me, but as I leave to catch a Leeds-bound train I can't help feeling that all is right with the world so long as someone somewhere in suburbia is combing tassels on scarves.
moons.co.uk
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marksandspencer.com